The Concord Band celebrates 51 years of music making with a fascinating program of music by French and American compos-ers. Join us on Saturday, March 6, 2010, at

8 pm, at The Performing Arts Center at 51 Walden Street in Concord, as the Concord Band presents The French Connection, fea-turing guest ensemble the Back Bay Saxo-phone Quartet and alto saxophone soloist Dennis Shafer. The concert will open with Overture in C written in 1793 by Charles Simon Catel, who maintained a long asso-ciation with the Band of the French Na-tional Guard. The Overture is an elegant model of late 18th-century musical style, clearly influenced by the music of Mozart. Suite Française by Darius Milhaud was commissioned by publishing firm Leeds Music, and each of the five movements is named after the French provinces where American and Allied armies joined forces with the French underground to liberate France during World War II. Late in his life, Claude Debussy com-posed two books of piano preludes. The Girl with the Flaxen Hair being the eighth prelude in book one. These preludes were not based on programmatic material, but were free in form and evocative in nature, with the characteristics of an improvisa-tion. This arrangement by John Moss fea-tures alto saxophone soloist Dennis Shafer performing this beautiful musical gem.

Closing the first half of the program will be March to the Scaffold, the fourth move-ment of The Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. The programmatic sym-phony was first performed in 1830 and is considered one of the most significant pieces of the early Romantic period. The second half of the concert opens with a brass fanfare written in 1912 by French composer Paul Dukas, who was considered a champion of French modern music. The Fanfare from his opera La Péri holds a unique place in the brass ensemble repertoire, and is likely one of the most notable fanfares in the twentieth century literature. Eminent American composer and ar-ranger Bill Holcombe provides us with a beautiful setting for woodwinds of another prelude by Debussy, this one from Suite Bergamasque. The unique colors of the woodwind ensemble bring to this out-standing arrangement a gleam and trans-parency, full impressionistic sonorities and colors. This Winter Concert will feature the Back Bay Saxophone Quartet as our guest ensemble performing Stephen Foster Revisited, a setting by Bill Hol-combe of familiar Stephen Foster tunes including Camptown Races, I Dream of Jeannie, O Susannah, Beautiful Dreamer, and Swannee River. Connecticut native Charles Ives provides us with a collection of songs in Old Home Days, a five movement suite that clearly presents the composer’s love of familiar tunes and grass roots music making. Of special fun is the fifth movement, “London Bridge is Fallen Down” which nods to the composer’s wild and unbridled keyboard improvisations. Concluding the program will be the French march Le Régiment de Sambre et Meuse by Joseph F. Rauski. Some will rec-ognize this unique march as that played by the Ohio State University Marching Band and their signature “Script Ohio” formation that concludes with the dotting of the “i” by the sousaphone. �

Box 302, Concord, MA 01742 Phone: (978) 897-9969 Internet: www.concordband.org

�� from the Concord Band N O T E S

Since 1959 the community band with a professional attitude Winter/Spring 2010

Box 302, Concord, MA 01742 (978) 897-9969 www.concordband.org

Dennis Shafer and the Back Bay Saxophone Quartet

In 2008, Dennis Shafer was presented a Legacy Award by Meryl Streep from the Creativity Foundation. A native of Law-rence, Kansas, he returned to Boston this year from Paris, where he studied with con-temporary saxophonist Jean-Michel Goury. In Paris, Dennis worked with several great composers and saxophonists, including François Rosse, Etienne Rolin, Yosh'ko Seffer, François Coutinaud, and Rico Gub-ler. He also premiered works by Robert Lemay, Jacques Hetu, Yosh'ko Seffer, and toured with various ensembles across France, as well as Austria, Hungary, and Thailand. Dennis Shafer is the founder and co-founder of several groups, including Le Tapis Volant, Sounds in Bloom, the Back Bay Saxophone Quartet and the Opus Jazz Duo. The Back Bay Saxophone Quartet is a dynamic group dedicated to advancing chamber music of the 21st century. From landmark compositions of centuries past to the most recent works of this new century, their concerts are stimulating, entertaining, and unpredictable. The group formed in 2001 while its members studied at two of Boston's conservatories. They made their home in Boston's Back Bay area, pounding the pavement with their energetic perform-ances. Audiences were lured by the invigo-

rating sounds of the group's popular and jazz genre, and as the group's focus pivoted toward more innovative programming, lis-teners became even more engaged. BBSQ maintains a vivid repertoire, balanced be-tween notable pioneers as well as visionar-ies of tomorrow. Members include Jennifer Bill, Lauren Nicholas, Dennis Shafer and John Knasas. �

©

51st Season

WINTER CONCERT The French Connection—Saturday, March 6th

Celebrates the Saxophone

The Concord Band Concerts at 8:00 PM

WINTER CONCERT

Saturday, March 6, 2010 The Performing Arts Center

at 51 Walden Street Concord, Massachusetts

For tickets call (978) 897-9969

SPRING POPS Featuring vocalist Amanda Carr

Friday, April 9, 2010 51 Walden

Spon. by the Rotary Club of Concord. For tickets call Joan Hale at Shoe-maker & Jennings (978) 369-1500.

Saturday, April 10, 2010 51 Walden

Spon. by Emerson Hosp. Auxiliary. For tickets call Priscilla Gannon

at (508) 341-8185.

The Making of the Concord Band Concert Archive—Sound, and now, Sight

nently installed at 51 Walden. This, of course, meant that it was no longer neces-sary for stands to be set up and micro-phone cable to be run for each concert. As planning for the Concord Band’s 50th Anniversary season, 2008-2009, took place, Dan Diamond, a long-time Band member and Trustee, wondered whether it would be feasible to take the next logical step and make video recordings of the Band’s concerts. He contacted Charles Paige, Executive Director of Concord-Carlisle TV, the town’s public access ca-ble channel, and a visit by CCTV people to 51 Walden suggested that our building was ideal. The control booth was perfect, but the key ingredient was that a profes-sional audio engineer was already re-cording the music, which meant that he might be able to provide the necessary stereo feed. As it turned out, he could. There was now only one ingredient missing: We would have to find a pro-ducer who could read concert band con-ductors’ scores, was willing to learn a lit-tle about TV production, but most impor-tant of all, was willing to put in the time in advance of each Concord Band concert to analyze and mark up a set of scores with camera cues that he or she would read back in real time during a concert to the technical director. The technical direc-tor, in turn, would actually communicate with the camera operators over an inter-com, telling each of them what their next shot should be (e.g., solo clarinet) and operate the real-time camera switch to determine which camera image to record. The technical director must be an experi-

enced profes-sional, and Matt Geiger, CCTV’s production man-ager, has handled that job superbly in all three vid-eos. Finding an experienced con-cert producer was out of the quest ion, be cause this had to be a volunteer. While we put out the word that we were looking for such an individ-ual, Dan drafted

a one page document that could have been entitled How to be a Video Producer for a Concert Band Concert. It had a chart showing where all the instruments of the Band sat, and a section labeled “Intercom Instructions for Communications between Video Producer, Camera Operators and Switch Operator”, which, ignoring the role of the technical director, shows how little he knew about video operations at the time. Ignorance being bliss, however, the Band found Barry Mirrer, who had band conducting experience mostly from conducting pit bands for shows. He has been perfect for the job, getting better and better at it with each of the three videos that have now been made. Once the video has been recorded, all that remains is for the raw “footage” to be cleaned up, a title screen added up front and credits to be added at the end. For the first Band concert video, Dan Diamond, who had by then discovered that he was the Executive Producer of the video, de-cided that it might be fun to learn how to do the post-production editing himself. Like lots of things (skiing, for example) that look like fun until one tries to do

them oneself, he managed to get through it—and some parts of it actually are fun. But having to re-learn the software twice a year—because that’s not often enough to remember how to do much of any-thing—does take some of the fun out of it. All Concord Band concert videos may be viewed on CCTV’s website, located at http://concordtv.org/?q=video-on-demand. While none of the Concord Band’s video archivists is paid, it does cost about $40,000 a year to run the Band, which can-not operate solely on the income from ticket, CD and DVD sales and sponsored concerts If you’d like to help out finan-cially, please write a tax-deductible check for as much as you can afford and mail it in the enclosed envelope. If you have no return envelope, simply send your check to the address at the top of this newsletter. �

The robocam (inset), operated from inside the control booth, above and behind the music stage at Concord’s Performing Arts Center at 51 Walden, captures many interesting views of the Concord Band and Music Di-rector James O’Dell.

Audio recordings of the Concord Band’s concerts go back to the tenure of the Band’s first Music Director, William M. Toland, in 1962. Recorded initially on Phillips cassettes by an amateur, the cas-settes were made available to any mem-bers of the Band who wanted to have something to show for all the effort that had gone into their concert preparations and were also saved as part of what be-came the Concord Band Archive. The Archive is now kept in the vault at the Concord Public Library. In the ‘70’s, when it became economi-cal to produce CDs on a small scale, the father of one of the members of the Band began to record our concerts digitally, using VHS video cassettes as the record-ing medium. Eventually, the Band hired a professional audio engineer, who

brought in hundreds of pounds of digital recording equip-ment for each con-cert and set up mul-tiple high-quality microphones on stands, running end-less cable up into the control booth that sits above the percussion equip-ment closets at the back of the music stage at the Per-forming Arts Center at 51 Walden. Over time, the recording equipment became less bulky; today a conventional PC

running specialized software attached to a multi-channel microphone mixer is used. A few years ago, the Band’s audio engineer at that time gave the Band four high-quality microphones and all the nec-essary cable so that they could be perma-

Audio engineer Steve Munley records four channels, which he mixes down to two after the con-cert for the con-cert CD. He also provides the stereo sound for the DVD of to-night’s concert in real time.

Cameras, one at the rear of the hall, one on each side, and a re-motely operated camera behind the Band, give the producer and tech-nical director many options. All the CCTV camera operators are volunteers.

Producer Barry Mirrer de-termines what should be featured on screen based on the musical score.

Technical Director Matt Geiger of CCTV directs and selects camera shots in real time.